FP:
M. A. Khan, welcome to Frontpage Interview. Let’s begin with your
own personal journey. Tell us where you were born and your early
life as a Muslim.

Khan: Thank you Jamie; I am delighted to be
here.

I was born and brought up in a conservative Muslim society.
Having completed my university studies in India, I moved to the
West.

I, however, grew up with a liberal outlook. In my school and
university days, my closest friends were Hindus and Sikhs, who were
more liberal, easy-going and humble with fewer religious scruples. I
had wholly given up religious rituals by the time I completed my
university studies: they just didn’t attract me.

At the time of the tragic 9/11 attacks, I had lived in a liberal
society for over a decade. I had become convinced that religious
rituals—prayers, fasting, pilgrimage—were all meaningless. I should
be rewarded, I felt, for working hard, working intelligently, not
for blindly following some rituals, which bear no good to anybody.
Islam had very little to do with my life, except that I was part of
the Muslim society. I consumed haraam (prohibited) foods,
drank alcohol in moderation, shocking my Muslim peers.

Although I was this much liberal, let me be honest with you that
I was not excluded from those Muslims who felt that the 9/11 attacks
were justified. I, however, felt that those perished in the attacks
were innocent; they didn’t deserve it.

FP: Why did you think that the U.S. deserved it?

Khan: It would surprise everybody that someone,
whose life was little influenced by Islam, can feel this way. Why is
it so? It is because Muslim societies universally portray America as
a mortal enemy of Islam, particularly for its stance on the
Israel-Palestine conflict. The picture painted is that America’s
support for Israel causes terrible oppression and untold sufferings
to Palestinian Muslims. So, in the eyes of many Muslims, the 9/11
attacks gave the unjust superpower a bloody nose.

You hear from the media that only a small percentage of Muslims,
the radicalized ones, support the 9/11 attacks. I can assure you
that an overwhelming majority of believing Muslims feel a sense of
justification for the 9/11 attacks. However, very few of them will
confess it, especially when Western media do the survey.

I was, undoubtedly, very liberal, despite my upbringing in Muslim
society. Never read the sacred Islamic texts, I thought Islam was a
rational and peaceful religion, glaringly disregarding all the
horrible things Muslim were doing globally. I thought those
terrorists, acting in the name of Islam, were misguided.

FP: So how did you begin to change?

Khan: Prompted by so much scrutiny of Islam
after the 9/11 attacks, I slowly started reading Islam’s sacred
texts—the Qur’an and Prophet Muhammad’s traditions (Sunnah) and
biographies. I was shocked. I had been told all my life that the
Prophet Muhammad was the ideal human being: most merciful and just;
that Islam is a religion of peace; and I believed it. But the Qur’an
reads like a manifesto of open-ended war against non-Muslims and
speaks of converting or subjugating them into horribly degraded
dhimmi subjects.

In his prophetic career, especially during the critical last ten
years, Prophet Muhammad was anything but peaceful, merciful and
just. It was a depressing, torturous time lasting a couple of years.
For a Muslim of whatsoever conviction, consciously leaving Islam is
probably the most difficult thing. I made it. You may get a clear
picture of my struggle from my
testimony of leaving Islam.

FP: So tell us about your book.

Khan: I liberated myself from Islam after
studying some of the canonical Islamic texts. But I couldn’t stop;
my curiosity grew further. Over the past few years, I have done
extensive research on Islamic theology, as well as history: from
Prophet Muhammad to modern times. The more I read, the more I became
shocked. It has been a harrowing tale of inhuman brutality of
innocent people: forced conversion, brutal imperialism and
devastating slavery. It’s a saga of great human tragedy and all
these were perpetrated by Muslim invaders and rulers over the
centuries in the name of Islamic holy war or Jihad, the foundational
creed of Islam. This tragic tale is the subject of my new book.

Let me highlight the content of the book a little for the
reader’s better understanding of what to expect. From the title, it
becomes clear that it is about Jihad and its history, a common topic
these days. But readers will find this book interesting and even
essential for making a complete grasp of the issue, even if they
have already read dozens of books on the subject.

What I have done is that I have tried to walk step-to-step with
Prophet Muhammad. When people read this book, they will able to
mirror how Muhammad, step by step, founded his creed. Most
importantly, it will become transparent to them why Allah started
showering down the commands for Jihad after 12 years of his
prophetic mission had passed. It will become crystal-clear why Allah
suddenly commanded Jihad at that juncture, what those commands were
and what it entails for a Muslim to become a Jihadi.

There is much controversy and disagreements about the true nature
of Jihad. This book will make it immediately clear to readers that
Jihad is overridingly, if not absolutely, violent and inhuman by
nature. This book also makes it thoroughly transparent that Jihad,
in its violent form, is the foundation, the heart, of Islam as I
assert: “Violent Jihad is the heart of Islam; without it, Islam
would, most likely, have died a natural death in the seventh century
itself” (p. 79).

I also demonstrate that Allah’s doctrine for Jihad entails three
cardinal commands:

2) Imperial expansion for the establishment of global Islamic
rule, which involves humiliating subjugation of dhimmi
subjects and their mindless exploitation, and

3) Slavery.

Each of these topics has been discussed in separate chapters,
beginning with how Allah commanded these as part of Jihad; how
Muhammad acted upon those commands to set forth ideal examples of
them; and how Muslims perpetuated those ideal Jihadi actions over
the centuries.

This book is packed with theological and historical information
on all these topics from India to Central Asia, to the Middle East,
to Africa, to Europe. It is filled with shocking, harrowing, tales.
It also details how even the United States had to struggle with the
enslavement of her ship-crews in North Africa, how they had to pay
humiliating ransom, and how, as demands continued to rise, they
bravely solved the issue with military actions. Therefore, people
from all these regions will quickly be able to relate to the content
and realize how horribly Islam had impacted the lives of their
forefathers.

FP: What do you hope your book will achieve?

Khan: I consider myself a nontheistic humanist
from a Muslim background; I believe in living in harmony with all
around us, irrespective of creed, race or color. Unfortunately,
Muslims have historically failed to do so; they continue to fail
today. This fact will become glaringly clear to all, when they read
this book.

My sincere hope is that Muslims, a community in which I have
lived 35 years of my life (all family and friends continue to be
Muslim), will be able to live in harmony with their non-Muslim
neighbors with total human rights guaranteed for either party.
Unfortunately, the treatment of non-Muslims in Islamic countries is
less than honorable and getting worse. Once my Muslim brethren read
this book, I feel, the whole reality of Islam upon their lives, upon
their ancestors’ life and upon their future generations would become
clear to them. And it will not be a pleasant one.

Obviously, most part of the world today is mired by the problem
of Islamic Jihadism. Since the 9/11 attacks, there have been no less
than 12,800 violent attacks by
Muslim individuals, mobs and Jihadi groups around the globe. I would
sincerely hope that my book help the world grasp the nature of the
ongoing Jihadi problem and act accordingly to assuage this malaise.
My target-readers, first and foremost, are Muslims. I firmly believe
that this book will rouse a deep sense of remorse amongst Muslims
concerning how horribly Islam impacted their ancestors’ life. They
suffered shocking, heart-breaking, atrocities. Muslim societies are
loaded with misinformation that Islam brought liberation from
existing tyranny and oppression to their ancestors. They will find
this notion totally groundless; instead, they will be convinced that
Islam undoubtedly brought all these horrors to their forefathers.

Muslims also universally believe that their religion and society
have always been free from the horrors of forced conversion,
imperialism and slavery; there is no place, they claim, for such
abominations in Islam. They believe that only Christians perpetrated
such horrors around the world, from India to the Americas; they are
vociferous in condemning the West over this. But after reading this
book, they will realize that it is Muslims, who were the master of
forced conversion, imperialism and slavery in the most shocking
forms since Islam’s birth. The European Christians had also become
the sustained victims of these Islamic brutalities for many
centuries before they themselves embarked upon these practices.
Muslims were, indeed, the masters to teach Europeans all these
horrible things.

FP: You also touch on the Sufis and some myths
about them.

Khan: This book will also shatter the most
firmly established belief amongst Muslims as well as non-Muslims
that Islam was propagated peacefully by Sufis and that force was
never a part of the propagation of Islam particularly in Southeast
Asia, and Central and East Africa. I have made it clear with solid
documentation from authentic sources that Sufis were mostly violent
Jihadis. Those, who engaged in conversion, did so through the
instrument of violence. Some Sufis were peaceful, but they never
played a significant role in conversion. Similarly, Islam’s spread
in Southeast Asia was anything but peaceful. Legendary Muslim
traveler and Sufi devotee Ibn Battutah records of brutal Jihadi
excursion against non-Muslims in Samudra (Indonesia) in the 1340s.
Southeast Asian Muslims would be shocked to find out how Islam was
imposed upon their forefathers. Similar was the case in Central and
East Africa.

On the whole, I hope this book will have significant humanizing
impact upon Muslims. Indeed, if they read it carefully, it will
become crystal-clear to them that Islam was created by Muhammad as
an imperialist movement to conquer the world disguised as a
religion, and that, at its core, it is fraudulent, brutal, inhuman
and worthy of little respect. I feel that after reading this book, a
majority of them would feel the urge of leaving this creed and
become a peaceful part of humanity.

FP: And how about the book as it relates to
non-Muslim readers?

Khan: This book is equally important, indeed
more important, for non-Muslims. While realizing how horribly Islam
had affected the lives of their forefathers (who suffered more),
they will also realize that Islam is here not to leave them and
their future generations alone.

This book will convinced them that Jihad, created as an eternal
command of Allah, will undoubtedly remain that way for a long time
to come. Jihad’s ultimate aim is to take over the world for
instituting the Qur’an and prophetic traditions as the sole
constitution and sources of law. Let me emphasize—which readers will
readily understand upon reading this book—that Islam is most
comfortably placed than ever to accomplish this ultimate goal. One
only has to ponder the fact that just one man, Muhammad, took up
Allah’s command of Jihad in 622 CE; and through all kinds of tricks,
he convinced his rather unwilling 200 or so disciples (yes, they
were unwilling; I have made it crystal-clear in the book) to take
upon the profession.

And see the result: some 1.4 billion—about a quarter of the
world-population—today are Muslims and growing fast. They are
increasingly warming up to their sacred duty of Jihad, which Allah
has made binding upon them (Quran 2:216). Just think about the
outcome of a Jihadi charge, even if taken up by a small fraction of
today’s Muslims, against non-Muslim humanity. Muslims are obviously
showing increasing willingness to go the Jihadi way to finish off
the 14-century-old battle of conquering the world.

However, even if they shun the violent way, they will do the same
by demographic change. Muslims in Britain are growing ten times
faster than the rest. At about 3.5% of the total population, a
greater majority of British Muslims are in favor of establishing
Sharia laws in the UK than those opposed to it. What will be the
religious demographics in the UK, say in the year 2050, and what
will be the law of the land? Sharia is horrible for non-Muslims as
well as Muslim women; its criminal codes are barbaric: stoning,
cutting of hands and feet and more.

Moreover, as soon as Muslims constitute a critical-mass of the
population, there will most likely be a civil-war-like situation in
Western countries. Indeed, such as situation is already active in
Muslim dominated Paris suburbs; non-Muslims dare not enter Muslim
ghettos in Sweden. Most of all, I urge my Western brethren to take a
glance all over the Muslim world, which may become the scene in the
heart of Europe before this century has passed.

This book must be read by all, Muslim or non-Muslim. This
increasingly solidifying, and potentially devastating, Jihadi
scourge is aggressively waged by Muslims; they can end it
peacefully. If Muslims read this book, they will find little
inspiration to fight for advancing Islam.

Non-Muslims must read this book to secure a peaceful, progressive
and just society for their generation and their offspring’s. The
fact is: Muslims rarely read books. And given the fact that, since
the 9/11 attacks, Muslims have grown more hostile than conciliatory,
more and more radical, shows that no solution will come from their
side; they will only intensify the conflict.

Therefore, it will, undoubtedly, be the responsibility of
non-Muslims to tackle the conflict and secure the future of their
children and grandchildren; they are the ones who have most to lose.
Leaders and politicians must read this book to grasp the depth of
the precipitating Islamic troubles around the world and devise
effective measures to tackle it.

Ordinary citizens must read this book to understand the same and
pressurize their leaders to put effective measures in place to
secure the liberal, tolerant and progressive future of the
secular-democratic world. If not, a lasting dark-age will descend
globally in a couple of generations.

Readers may have a look at the content as well as initial
assessment of the book from readers, including some well-known
authors and academics,
here.